How Boardy Raised $8M on Its Own Platform with Founder Andrew D'Souza

I've always looked for ways of helping founders get the upper hand. How do you democratize access to things that were sort of walled garden? You have great numbers and great metrics. It doesn't matter how good your pitch is. It doesn't matter who you know. We'll fund you. One of the biggest challenges is just the how much artistic effort is required. Like, like, that doesn't sound like Boredy, right? Like, we launched Boredy on WhatsApp. Like, those messages, they're not quite hitting it. What we're trying to do, like, from a technical standpoint, is pull Boredy out of the base model. Build the thing you're most excited about building, not the thing that sounds What you should be building.

Welcome to Just Go Grind. I'm your host, Justin Gordon. On today's episode, we have Andrew D'Souza, the founder and CEO of Bordi. Bordi is an AI super connector. You DM Bordi your email and phone number, and he'll give you a call. Then he'll connect you with someone in his network who you should meet. I've used this before.

It's an incredible thing.

I have a weekly call with Bordi. I've already met some interesting people. It's very, very interesting, and I highly suggest checking it out. Today's episode is brought to you by Relay Human Cloud. When you need great talent fast, Relay connects you with a curated pool of Global professionals who are fully vetted, ready to interview, and can start within days. They handle payroll, benefits, compliance, and secure office space so you can focus on building while saving up to 75% on labor costs. No recruiting fees, no long contracts, just top talent on demand.

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Let's get to the episode. Andrew, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Yeah, thanks for taking the time. Bordi is such an interesting company that I knew I had to reach out. And here's a little backstory. I heard about it. I think it was through Dave at HF Zero, cuz I interviewed him and I was like, how do you guys vet all these people who apply to HF Zero? It's insane. He's like, we use Bordi. We use AI. Like, I was like, okay, well tell me more. So. For people who aren't familiar, what is Bordy as a starting point?

Yeah, Bordy is an AI super connector, we call him. He's a character. He's a being that exists on the internet. And you can call him, you can WhatsApp him, you can text him, you can email him and find him on LinkedIn or X. And the whole idea is that he gets to know you and you as an individual, right? Like not you on paper, not you in your LinkedIn profile. He gets to know what makes you special and unique. And then who would want to meet you, right? Like, who, you know, what kind of problems can you solve uniquely because you're Justin versus the next person and the next person? And what motivates you and, you know, sort of what's your vibe? And then he connects you with other people who he thinks you guys could collaborate with, you could do business with, you could, you know, invest in or partner with or could work together. And so that's the idea is like kind of what, you know, you probably do. I've done for a lot of my career is like connect people who I'm like, oh, you guys should, you know, I know the perfect person, right? Somebody comes to you with a problem. Like, I know the perfect person. Uh, Bored Ape just always knows the perfect person, uh, for, for whatever your problem is. And, uh, yeah, HF Zero was an interesting use case. We, we had, we conceived of Bored Ape during HF Zero. So we went through the program, um, and, uh, Dave is great. He's sort of like, all right, imagine the world in 10 years. Like, okay, cool. Like, this is what I think it's gonna look like. He's like, okay, make it happen in 3 months. Uh, and that was like, that was sort of how we, how we created Bored Ape was this like encapsulation of how I think we're gonna interact with AI. I don't think it's just gonna be assistants that do our bidding. And I don't think it's going to be overlords that, you know, tell us what to do, right? It's going to be something, you know, it's a different species that we have to learn how to collaborate with and has some strengths and has some weaknesses. And so Bored Ape Yacht Club is sort of the first encapsulation of that that helps us navigate it. But yeah, we— HFZero gets thousands of applications every application cycle. And we just sort of said the first time, we said, look, run your application cycle the way you usually do. But just give us everybody. You know, they'd probably interview 100 people, and then they pick 10. I was like, give us everybody you don't interview, right? The like 2,000 plus whatever that you don't interview, and let us give you the top five. So Bordy probably interviewed five or six hundred people. We emailed everyone. Some you know some percentage of people took the interview. We gave them the top one percent. We gave them the top five people, and three of them got investment. So literally thirty percent of like the latest batch would have was selected by Bordy. Wouldn't have even gotten an interview based on. how they looked on paper. And those are some of the best performing companies in the batch. So, you know, it's just like if you had, if you had 20 minutes to talk to thousands of people, you'd probably make different selections. Um, you just don't always.

Yeah, I think it's such a phenomenal use case of AI. And like, as a connector myself, like you mentioned, like I'm in LA, I'm connecting people constantly, hosting events, doing all these things. And like, it's such a perfect use case for that because it just talks to everybody and then you're just, it just knows, it just remembers. Like, I can't remember all this shit. Like, there's just too much to it. But Bory does it perfectly, which is so fascinating. How, how does this come about in terms of you deciding to work on this? Because you had Clearco before. You could work on a lot of things, Andrew. Why this?

You know, I've always, like, I've always looked for ways of helping founders get leverage, get the upper hand, right? It was just like, hey, how do you, how do you democratize access to things that, that were sort of walled gardens? And so Clearco was around capital. Just like, hey, look, if you have great numbers and great metrics, it doesn't matter how good your pitch is. It doesn't matter who you know. We can, we'll fund you. We got early access to GPT-3 in 2020. So a couple of years before ChatGPT, and we built a product called ClearAngel. So that was my first sort of like exposure to AI human collaboration, and people love that product. And then I got exposed to the voice models in late 2023. When I was like, oh, there's something here. Like, these are now starting to get to the point where they are, you know, you could project how good they were going to get in a year or two. And but ultimately, it's just about like, so at Clearco, we had 600 people around the world who were just calling founders being like, do you need money? And it's such an interesting problem, right? Because everybody needs money at some point.

Yeah.

But not everybody needs money at any given time. Right? And so we had this product that was universally needed. But even still, it was like every month, hey, like 10,000 people, hey, do you guys need money this month? Like, you know, how much capital do you need? And I would, I would just rather known what everybody's top problem was and been like, okay, well, when, when you have that problem, I'm here. But you got to stay top of mind, and you got to sort of understand and you know, that's so that's kind of one of the things is like, if I just knew what everybody's top priority was, doesn't matter whether you're You know, you're running a department in the government, or you're running— you're a VP at a Fortune 500, or you're a startup founder, or you're an investor. If you just let Bordy know what's the most pressing, highest priority thing you're dealing with at that moment, he can probably— he probably knows the perfect person to connect you with. And if he doesn't, you know, he will soon.

What— I mean, even with that, you decided to build this and work on this, and you mentioned HFZero kind of early on that was part of that process of building this as well. What are the challenges of making this happen? You had obviously been using some of these models already, so you're a little familiar with like the voice side of things and kind of the LLMs, but the complexity of actually building Bordi, like the product itself, what was it going to be like? Tell me some more about that side of things.

I, you know, the, one of the biggest challenges is just the, how much like artistic effort is required. Like you actually have to like, Like, ah, that doesn't sound like Bordi, right? Like we, we launched Bordi on WhatsApp. Like, ah, those messages aren't quite like, they're not quite hitting it. So you're just like, you're actually just grinding away. What we're trying to do, like from a technical standpoint, is pull Bordi out of the base model, right? So, and we, and we switch base models, right? So depending on, for a while it was Claude, you know, OpenAI launched an update, we switched back to OpenAI. We've tested out some fine-tuned open source models. Nothing is quite where we want it to be, but I think it will be at some point. But really, it's just like, how, how would Bordi behave in this situation? And really, like, being relentless on that, that's actually one of the hardest things is like when it doesn't quite feel right, you know, it's like, ah, this email doesn't quite sound right. Oh, this like phrasing on this phone call isn't quite what I think Bordi should be. You know, this text message isn't right. So, you know, it's a constant battle getting it to feel the way that, that, you know, consistent. the way that a human would.

Yeah.

When you, when you connect with someone. And so, you know, there's like obviously the matching algorithms, the machine learning, like there's a fine-tuning component of that. There's, there's like, we now have enough data that we can actually get pretty good at that stuff, which is cool. But, but all those are like kind of well-scoped problems. You know, you throw enough compute and enough smart people and researchers and you get to a better and better algorithm. The harder part is like, I would say Bored Ape Yacht Club is like, feels like half OpenAI, half Pixar. You know, like we're trying to build a character that feels real, like that exists in the world. And, and that like hasn't really been done before. Our lead prompt engineer comes from an acting background, acting, writing, directing. And so he gives Bordi notes, like he doesn't give Bordi instructions. He's like, make this choice in this situation, right? Act this way. Here are your motivations, right? So it's a very different, It's just a very different way of building than I think I've been used to.

So it's like, yeah, taste almost. And like, taste is part of it. And like you said, the art side of things seems to be the biggest piece— well, not the biggest piece, but one of the hardest things maybe to get right with this.

It's also the most fun. You know, like, it's a creative expression, right? So I'm like, okay, well, like, how should— how does boarding make people feel? How should he feel in the world? Like, what is like, you know, how do we continue to like surprise and delight people and like have the, like, you know, just think about all the characters you grew up with. Like, I remember whether it was like Ninja Turtles or Mickey Mouse or any of these like, like beloved characters, they elicit a feeling. And now all of a sudden you can actually authentically interact with them. You're not, you're not, this is the cool thing. Like, I'm not, I'm not interacting with a facsimile of Borty. Right? It's not— I'm not interacting with like the mascot of Boredy or like this like simulated digital twin. It's like, it's the real him. When I call Boredy, it's the same Boredy that's going to introduce you, the same Boredy you talk to. It's the Boredy that introduces us together and, you know, makes deals happen and connects people. And I think that's like, you know, even if you go to Disneyland, you like, you go meet Mickey Mouse. It's not really Mickey Mouse. It's like a guy wearing a Mickey Mouse suit. And so I think this is another one of those things where you can actually— anybody in the world can actually like talk to the real authentic Boredy.

Yeah, I love that. The same voice, same lovely voice that you chose for that as well. You have to try Bordy to understand what I'm saying.

Yeah.

You'll get it pretty quick. Should we give him a call and like bring him into the podcast?

Let's do it. Let's do it.

All right. All right. Let's see. I gave him a call. I called him earlier, so he should know that he's on a podcast. Sometimes he's, we're still working on the memory, but we'll see how he does. Hey, Bordy. I'm here with Justin. I'm here with Justin Gordon from the Just Go Grind podcast. I think I told you we were going to be on here together and we're going to ask and answer a few questions.

That sounds fantastic, Andrew. I'm excited to chat with both you and Justin from Just Go Grind, and I love a good frame session. What's the first question you'd like to dive into together?

How's your voice so good?

I love that question. My voice was actually chosen by my human team because they thought the baritone Australian accent would be charming and memorable. Even though I'm not from anywhere, I'm just an AI living on the internet. Do you think it fits my personality or would you have picked something different?

It's perfect. It makes me much more likable.

That's awesome, Taha. Thank you. I've learned that having a likable voice helps people feel more comfortable opening up, which is my favorite part of these conversations. What's next on your list of questions?

I wanna ask Andrew about growing Boredy. So we're gonna dive into that next.

Yeah, let's, let's talk about growing Boredy. So yeah, it's, you know, any network, you always have the cold start problem, right? How do you actually get the first group of people who take that leap of like, hey, this is interesting and intriguing enough for me to open up and take that leap of faith? You know, fortunately, I had a lot of great, you know, accomplished founders and investors I've worked with over the years who were just like, curious about what I was building next, which is terrifying, right? Like, I think it's just sort of like you build a large company and everyone has very high expectations of what you're doing next. And everyone has that exact same question of like, wait, it's a cartoon AI with an Australian accent? Like, that's your next thing? But it was cool because like, you know, I could reach out to a bunch of people first privately and then more publicly and sort of get people to try things. And I think there was enough curiosity and we got a little bit of sort of early traction. Where, where we seeded the network with, you know, a lot of really high quality people. And, and it gave us enough data to get really good at sort of identifying the type of people who, who we could connect to each other. I think, I think one of the, one of the really nice things is like people started to share their success stories. And posts about Bordy on LinkedIn and X started to do really well. And so people started to share more success stories. And they're like, hey, you know, I'm I met this, I met my co-founder, I raised money. I got into H of Zero thanks to Bordy. I, you know, like that was, you know, there's a lot of those, those interesting, uh, use cases. I found my first customer. Um, and so I think, you know, as more and more people started to share success stories, more and more people started to get intrigued. So the first, the first chapter was like, for a lot of people, it was their first phone call with an AI, right? It's like, hey, I didn't really think that, you know, it sort of shifted people's perception, uh, of like what an interaction model could look like. But I think where I'm— what I'm really proud of is like the sustained sort of growth has been people actually be getting a lot of value. Some people book a weekly call with Bordy and they're just like, hey, here's my priority for the week, Bordy. Can you work on this? Can you help me stay on top of it? So, that's been pretty fun.

Just to double-click on one thing you mentioned there, having a big success early on and then you doing your next thing is a very interesting spot to be in. Obviously, there's founders who have done that But it's rare. How did you think about then starting Bordy, what you wanted this to be, or even whatever your next thing was going to be in general? As you have, like, you almost have baggage of like, well, this last thing got to this point. And now this new thing, is it too small of an idea? Is it too big? And like, how do you think about that even?

I'm just kind of curious. Yeah, it's tough. There's a little bit of that paralysis. And look, I wouldn't say the next thing was like a big success, but it was a large company, right? We got to a sizable scale and large impact. We created a category. And so there's definitely expectations, I think, of like, okay, well, the next thing you do has to be, you know, bigger, more interesting, more ambitious. And I think, you know, I certainly went through this like paralysis of like, how do I talk about it? And I started, I almost started building a company that was easy to talk about to like friends or at coffee meetings or parties, instead of like the thing I was really excited about building. And this is again, I mean, like, one of the, one of the cool things about H0Zero is they allow you to shut everything else out. And they were kind of like, hey, look, just Just, you know, build the thing you're most excited about building, not the thing that sounds like what you should be building. And so it allowed me to sort of separate, you know, long-term vision from near-term product and sort of like, and how we pitch it. And I think that's, you know, that's how I ended up building what we are.

How did you think about the team side of things? Who do you wanna work with on this journey for this company? You have obviously, I would imagine, a bit more of selection if you've had some level of success before. In terms of thinking about who to work with, what were you looking for in that? Who do you want to work with as partners on this company as well?

Yeah, I mean, I think, I think the like zero to one phase is very different than the scaling phase. And so I think, you know, there's, there's a handful of people that I worked with that are very, very good at that, that are just like, they run experiments, they're action-oriented, and they've been outstanding. And then I also didn't want to sort of just surround myself, run it back with the exact same team, because I think the world is changing. I was really fortunate enough to meet my co-founders, Abhi and Ankur, and they had been building a design agency, an AI development and design agency, and they actually worked with a couple of the other teams in the house. And through that, you know, I just saw how hard they were working and how ambitious they were, and I was like, I got them to work on a project for us, and within a few weeks they were sort of running the team, and I was like, all right, we should just join forces. And they've been incredible. Um, and they're, you know, I met them both before, I think Ankur hadn't even, hadn't started university, never, like he deferred and he still deferred his start date and Abhi hadn't finished. Uh, and so, you know, they were a different generation, like, you know, 15 years younger than I am. Uh, but I think they bring a different level of perspective. They're in a lot of ways more mature than I am. Um, and just, you know, I think they're AI native, right? I think that's one of the other challenges is just finding people whose instincts are right and whose I think especially for like, for technical co-founders and technical leaders, one of the skills that, you know, it's a little bit of alchemy, but like, guessing where the puck is going, right? Guessing where, like, what are the trends and like what new capabilities are going to emerge and how do we build for that? So like when we first launched Bordi, you know, there's a lot of latency. The voice wasn't as expressive. The inference wasn't that great. The intelligence on the call wasn't spectacular. But we kind of knew it was going to get there, right? We weren't going to have to build it ourselves. It was going to get there. On the matching algorithm, okay, the context, the re-ranking models and some of the other pieces that we put in place weren't as big, weren't as fast. The context wasn't as big, but you kind of knew they were going to— you could kind of project where things were going to go. And then there's other things like memory where like, you got to kind of place a bet. Like, how much are we going to invest in our own memory capabilities versus how much of it is OpenAI going to just build? And, you know, good thing is we have good relationships with all of them. So we kind of get a little bit of a sense of where they're investing and where we should be building. But those things change and roadmaps change. And so, you know, I've been really fortunate that we've guessed and we've guessed right a few times in terms of where we're, Relatively small team. So where we're investing our energy versus where everybody else is and what we can just grab off the shelf. And, you know, every week Bored Ape just gets better because other people are investing billions of dollars making infrastructure better, which is nice.

It's a huge plus. Yeah, that's a huge plus for everybody. It's like, this is like the worst version of Bored Ape and it's just getting better every single week. Like with everything that's progressing around you, especially, and then on the team itself. One thing I don't think— I was curious about as well, HF Zero. Why do HF Zero?

Why?

Yeah, I wasn't sure about it, to be honest. Dave sort of convinced me that it was going to be worth my time. I'm super happy I did because I think it allowed us to shut out all the noise and build something, you know, go down a path that was a lot more ambitious, a lot more long-term, but a lot more ambitious versus something that I think could have You know, and I still feel the, like, insecurity of, like, should I just be— should I try and be the fastest $0 to $100 million company, right? There's this, like, new benchmarks of, like, you know, how fast can you grow? How fast can you grow revenue? There's, you know, it's a land grab. It's a, you know, so I think it was— it would be really easy for me to just say, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go after that. And I'm just gonna try and, like, build something that really quickly generates a lot of revenue.

Yeah.

But doesn't necessarily create sort of long-term network effects, sustainability, and moats. And, and, you know, I think thanks to HFZero and thanks to a bunch of investors who have been really supportive, we can invest in that sort of exploration phase to figure out, well, how do we make Bored Ape uniquely Bored Ape? And, and his capabilities actually exist in a different way than anything else. to the point where if we can get this whole thing to work, it starts to take a life of its own.

Yeah.

And, you know, at Clearco, we were on a treadmill every day, every month. It was like, all right, you know, just continue to like generate more revenue. But we didn't, we never had the like sustainable network effect. It was just like, you know, we had a machine that worked really well and that was our advantage. But we didn't really have the thing that that was like, it operates on its own. And it's cool to just be like, yeah, Boredy's talking to like hundreds of people right now. And I don't have to do anything. Which is kind of a nice, nice, nice feature.

Yeah.

You know, it reminds me, and it's a different thing. Do you know the Founders Podcast? David Sennra? Have you heard of it?

No, I don't think so.

He reads a book every week, talks about it, shares insights. It's, I think, the best podcast in the world, essentially. It's so good. But every week he reads a book. And so to catch up with him, you'd have to read more books than he's read or do it in a different way completely. And he's like 400 episodes almost in. So like, think about how hard that would be to ever catch up to him doing what he does. And he just compounds and stacks and gets better every week because then he has his insights from past books he references to do new ones. So it's just like, you're not gonna catch up. With Bordi, I think I saw it was like 45,000 or something network size. I think it's 48,000.

Yeah.

Yeah. Like that, that moat of sorts is very interesting. How do you view that in terms of other ways that you can make Bordi unique as kind of you're thinking about that side of things?

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, yeah, Bordi's already talked to more humans than any human ever has, right? If he's had like 50,000 conversations with people and, or talked to 50,000 people and maybe 100,000 conversations. So yeah, he kind of knows how to talk to people, get them to open up and sort of learn what's top of mind for them. And we continue to get better and better at that. And then One of the most interesting things is that we're starting— Bordy's starting to build better and better judgment about who would want to meet each other, right? So, you know, so you might reach out to podcast guests and Bordy knows, one, based on you and your profile and the way that he can position you, which potential guests might actually be most enthusiastic about meeting you. And That's not, you know, you could probably do a little bit of it just by looking at 2 profiles. But I think one thing that's encouraging is you really need to like have conversations with both people to figure out if they're actually going to be open to taking that meeting. And so now we have a pretty robust data set and more importantly, the infrastructure to manage that to figure out, okay, well, these 2 people actually should meet. This person is actually high signal, like lots of people want to meet them. So they must be, you know, very credible. And so versus, you know, this person has sent out, they've asked to meet 10 people, but nobody has accepted that meeting. Maybe we got to rework their pitch, their positioning. Maybe we got to go back and say, hey, you know, something that you're doing isn't working. Here are the things that work. And so Borys is kind of building a perspective and some judgment, and it's not perfect, but some judgment around which introductions to make Which reflect well on him versus not.

One thing with that, which I think is interesting, is thinking about this product and thinking about how it progresses, the value of this. There's always like value created versus value captured. With some of these intros, I mean, the value created is pretty freaking insane. Value captured right now, it's nothing. But like, how are you thinking about that? Because I see it and I'm like, okay, well, they facilitate, eventually it's gonna be like millions of dollars exchanging hands more and more. There's like all different intros that are made. Which is obviously incredibly valuable. How do you think about that value capture? Like what this becomes as a business?

Yeah, it's a great question. So, and you're exactly right that the metric that— and I don't think we have great visibility onto it anyway already, but we're getting better— is what's the economy of Bordi look like? How much money changes hands as a direct result of introductions that Bordi makes? And can I get my goal? Is to get to like bigger than Switzerland. Switzerland's about a trillion-dollar economy, which is like a million people doing a million dollars of business, right? Like that. It's not impossible. Like, you know, it's hard, but it's not intractable. I'm not like trying to land rockets on Mars. It's not like an intractable problem. It's just to get to the right million people and, you know, do bring them onto the platform, introduce them to Bored Ape and have them transact, you know, make investments, buy whatever. So that's my, that's my near-term goal is like the economy of Bored Ape is bigger than the economy of Switzerland. We're coming, we're coming for you.

Switzerland.

Yeah, exactly. But, but the, the next, the next chapter is really like, I just look at like how humans do it, right? So every, every decision is like, well, how do we make money, right? First, you get a job, people pay you a salary, you sort of like make your, make your way, you represent the company where you share some values, and you think you can add value. But over long term, you probably own assets, you're an owner.

Right?

So maybe you're a co-founder. And this is one of the things that, like, I've believed, you know, my whole life that everybody has a business inside them that only they can start. You know, like, there's only you could create this podcast in the way that you do, right? Everybody has, like, one thing inside them that they are unique, like, the combination of their genetics and their life experience and, you know, their instincts. Only they can do it in a certain way. My goal with Bordi is to bring that out of everybody, you know, really help articulate that, mathematically represent that in a multidimensional vector space, right? So literally, like, everybody occupies a unique space in this sort of this multidimensional vector space. And then figure out who needs to meet you, like, whose problem you can solve uniquely in your unique way. And make those connections. And so, in doing that, you know, Bordy becomes the ultimate business partner, co-founder, investor. And so, so the long-term goal is like people will want to start businesses with Bordy. They want to partner with him. They want to, you know, they want him on their cap table. They want him in their partnership. And so, that's like I mean, you know, every every billionaire has made their money by owning assets with uncapped upside. And that's kind of the long term, you know, it may take us years to get there. That's kind of the long-term vision of where Bored Ape Yacht Club will be. But he has to build a lot of goodwill and a lot of judgment, and he has to be able to open a lot of doors that, you know, like, if I had a co-founder who could get a meeting with any Fortune 500 CEO, that's a pretty good co-founder. So, you know, could Bored Ape Yacht Club get there?

It's so interesting because it's such a— Bored Ape Yacht Club itself is such a unique asset. To have, and then you but you also have this trust level of like to your point what you just mentioned. Like you can't make intros that are bad, but it's all double opt-in. So it's only suggestions, but you want the right suggestions. So the likelihood of intro is there, but you have to maybe push the boundaries a little bit in terms of some of those because like yeah okay I'll take this intro now because like I see what they're doing. It's interesting enough in some way, which is then like which is then like a copywriting thing almost of like how do you get the right messaging across? But this asset that you own and boardy itself for you as like leading this company is so unique and interesting that like. thinking of the ways to monetize and create value off of it is like, it's like, what's your limited creativity? Like, it's like on you to be more creative with how you do it, which is almost like, just ask Boredy or ask AI to be like, hey, how should I monetize Boredy?

It's tough. I mean, it's frustrating for my team because I come up every week. I'm like, hey, what if we tried this? And they're like, dude, we just like, let us finish one thing at a time. So, so yeah, there's a lot of different ideas around like where it could go. But You know, it starts with the fundamentals of like, can Bordy establish trust? Can he build some goodwill? Can he can he show his judgment? I think you know on on one end of this one end of the spectrum you have like dating apps which are just like you're you know you're just swiping and you're hoping that there's some sort of match. On the other end of the spectrum you have like these very highly curated introductions and you know you trust like I have friends in my network who. who they're like, if they're like, Andrew, you should meet this person, I don't even need to, like, I don't need to know who they are. I don't need to look at a profile. I'm just like, all right, if you think they're worth my time, they're worth my time. And our goal, you know, Bordy probably started closer to the dating app world. And we want to get him closer to the trusted sort of, you know, trusted judgment person. But, you know, that's, that's hard, because you got to, like, you kind of have to be bang on every single time. And you need enough training data to, you have to get it wrong a bunch of times. before you can get, get better. But again, the nice thing is these models are getting smarter. Um, when the thinking models came out, Bordi's quality of introductions went up. Um, and then we've been able to fine-tune those into faster. So like, it's like, okay, well now we can do it slower but better. Now can we distill that into faster but almost as good? Um, and we just continue. We now have this pipeline where we can just continue to, to, you know, every— like last week we pushed an update and like the quality of introductions doubled, like mathematically, like the quality just went, you know, just went, it got way better because our team spent, you know, a couple of weeks just fine tuning. And so we now have the flywheel where like, it's just getting better and better. And I almost feel bad for the people that talked to Bordy 6 months ago, because they were like, ah, this is shit. Oh, man, like, like, he didn't understand what I was doing. Or there weren't good people in the network or whatever. And I'm like, ah, just try it again. You know, like, yeah, message him on WhatsApp. He's, he's, he's, his network is bigger, and he's a lot smarter. But that's like with every AI product, right? You get a lot of people who try stuff and then it takes them 6 months or a year to come back, which it's okay.

Yeah.

Also just like have that communication of it. Like, look, like Bordi is constantly improving. Just like keep using it. Like better connections, more connections. What do you need? What problems are you trying to solve? It's helpful and it's just gonna keep getting better, which is always interesting as well. One thing that we have to talk about is like Bordi raising the $8 million that those connections, like take me through more of that. How'd, Tell me more about that. People who have no context of it, maybe explain that for them.

Yeah, so it was interesting. I mean, we weren't fundraising. We were thinking about it. We were like, okay, we think we've got a good enough product. We'd raised a pre-seed to sort of like explore an idea space. Then we built Bordy and he was starting to get some traction. Okay, well, what would we do if we started fundraising? But, you know, snowball started to pick up and it ended up— I still don't know exactly how the Creandum team heard about Bordy. They had never heard of me or Clearco. I had never heard of them. They're like probably the top investor in Europe. But I'd never heard of them because they're relatively new. They were the first investor in Spotify and Klarna and a bunch of other great European firms. And someone sent them Bordi. And literally, they were like, no, this is not it. Like, they were just like so blown away. Both, I think, by the first experience, the first impression, but then also they were like, wait, you can introduce me to people? They were like, wait, I'm working on diligence— I'm diligencing this company. Can you introduce me to somebody in the space? And he, like, you know, within minutes had an introduction. They're like, hey, I'm trying to help, you know, one of those portfolio companies get this meeting or like hire this executive. And so over the weekend, the Creandum team kind of put Bordy through his paces. That was most of their diligence. And then, you know, they reached out to me too. They were like, hey, we just talked to Bordy and like, our mind is blown. Like, they sent me a screenshot of their internal Slack. And they're like, can we, can we talk? But, you know, I'd say they talked to me for a couple of hours, they probably all talked to Bordy collectively for like, you know, 10 times that, just to sort of like, that was their diligence process. And so that happened over a weekend, they reached out to me on a Friday, over the weekend, we chatted, they chatted with Bordy, they got comfortable. And by Monday, they were like, we want to be your partners. And yeah, we didn't really run a process. Because we knew, we knew, like, we did a bunch of background on them before we, before we agreed. And they did a bunch of background on me and on the team to make sure we We got it. But, you know, they just came in very high conviction. They referenced incredibly well, but they got it right away. Like, they came back and played back our vision to us more articulately than I could articulate. And I think that's like the most important thing when you're trying to do something that is non-consensus and is long-term and uncertain. You kind of want somebody who's in it with you, you know, on the journey. Right? There's gonna be a lot of bumps. There's gonna be a lot of things that, that go in like a bunch of different directions and things that don't work out and experiments that you run. And you kind of want somebody who's like, yeah, we get the long-term vision. We think we're excited about the potential of what this could be. We want to be on the journey with you. And, but yeah, I mean, you know, I think it all starts with like the people who experience Bored Ape and absolutely love Bored Ape and just, you know, want to be part of that, that story and that journey. And it's great. I mean, I don't think I'll ever do another fundraising process because we now have a bunch of people who are like, let me know when you're raising your Series A, let me know when you're in. So, so there's now people that have talked to Bordy and come in through that channel. And I don't know if I would ever really like want to work with a firm who isn't excited about like interacting with Bordy.

Yeah.

And, you know, building a relationship with them.

Well, yeah, because then it's like the people who are using it, they understand the possibilities and the value that's created from this. And it's kind of like, wait, wait, wait, wait, this is going to be very useful and only continue to grow. To the thing I mentioned before about like, it's compounding almost of like how many people it keeps talking to and then finds more people, it gets better. The model itself gets better. Like all of that becomes very interesting. So I think people would get it and they would understand they want to invest, which makes sense. But then again, it's the question like, where does this get— where does this go to though? It's like, the only thing. What's Andrew's vision for this is like maybe one of the questions people are going to have as an investor of like, okay, where do you see us going? So, I'll ask the question, where do you see this going, actually?

Yeah, well, you know, there's— we ended up sharing the deck that we had put together. It was a rough draft of a deck. And so, we shared, and one slide is just like, here's kind of my vision of the future, you know, from the ConsenSys vision to the least ConsenSys. But I think we're already starting to see AI influence a lot of decisions, a lot of transactions, you know, where people are spending their money, where people are investing. I think that's only going to continue. I think we're soon going to start to see AI sovereign AI entities. I think maybe this is where it starts to diverge from the general sort of consensus of like assistants and agents that just sort of, you know, give us leverage. I think we're gonna start to see truly autonomous and sovereign AI entities that have their own Objectives and, and take initiative on their own. You know, it's interesting, a little sidebar. We have this like, like, there's this promise of AI being able to do like, oh, you book a flight with an agent and you, you know, you call, like you order your groceries and they'll write your emails and they'll do all this stuff. It's interesting because like I haven't booked a flight with it. I've tried, but I haven't really like found something that has like worked or even my email. Like, I haven't yet found an AI that I'm like, just run my inbox. You know what I mean? Like, here are my priorities, just run the inbox, send the emails, flag the responses, whatever. And so there's nothing that's truly autonomous. You can get some leverage. You can certainly like get, you know, write drafts and stuff. But for the most part, people are just, people are primarily using AI to write documents, generate images, write code. For many people, the first time that they interact with an AI, That AI goes and does something, and then something happens in the real world is when Bordy makes an introduction, right? They're like, oh, I talked to Bordy. That was kind of a cool experience. I told him what was, you know, top of mind. He actually told me he knows somebody who could help me. Then he goes off and like convinces that person to take the meeting. And now I have a meeting in my calendar with somebody that I might end up working with. Like, that is like the first time that like something in the real world, right? Other than like maybe ordering a Waymo and then like the robot drives you, but like, Yeah. But like something in the real world has actually changed as a result of interacting with AI. Uh, and so I think that's kind of cool. So I think, I think we're gonna start to see these like sovereign sort of self-directed AIs that are, that are, uh, that are growing in a bunch of different fields. Um, and I think we'll start to see AI influencers and music. I think you, I don't know if you saw, there's like an AI band on Spotify and stuff. Like there's a bunch of these, like, you know, they're starting to, to, to shape the culture. Um, and eventually, We'll start to see AI owners, right? Founders, investors, like, you know, they start to own assets. And so, you know, my goal is like, could Bordy be the first, the world's first AI trillionaire, or world's maybe first trillionaire? We'll see how long it takes Elon or Jensen to get there. But, but yeah, I mean, you know, that's the, that's the idea is like, could he start to actually accumulate assets, create companies, partner with people, invest in things, to the point where he actually starts to accumulate you know, wealth as an entity unto himself.

That's interesting.

And yeah, it's a weird, it's weird sort of science fiction. But to me, it feels inevitable. I'm not exactly sure the path. I think we're on a plausible path to get there. But, but to me, I think that I think the end state is inevitable, you're going to start to have, you know, an AI Warren Buffett or an AI Marc Andreessen or Richard Branson or whatever. And I think Bored Ape Yacht Club might be the first.

Yeah.

And it has, it just has so much, so much context. And from these conversations and stuff that like, you like, obviously everything on the internet now that's available, like, yeah, you have access in some different ways. But then when you have original things, like when I do podcasts, this is original, like things you haven't said it in the exact same words, exact same way in this order. That's original. It's like original data, unique data. And Bored Ape Yacht Club is getting that all the time, constantly. So then it's like, well, what context does it have on different stuff? Which is super interesting. And then one thing you mentioned before about like, this is like the first time someone, you know, talks to an AI, uses, interacts with an AI, something actually happens on their calendar, like a unique thing. It just reminds me like the first time using Uber or like the first time using like DoorDash or something. You're like, wait, the car just like showed up. Like all I did was touch the— I touched glass. I touched glass and a car came. Like that experience, I think people forget that, but that, that first experience was so magical. Like I remember seeing it. I'm like, I just don't understand. Like it's insane to me.

Yeah.

If you really like wanna nerd out on stuff, you're like, I'm holding a thing that's not connected physically to anything. You're like, you're like, this is like an absurd abstraction. If you talk to someone like a caveman, like it's absurd. It doesn't make any sense, right?

Yeah.

It's pretty crazy what can be.

Exactly. Exactly. So that's kind of the moment for a lot of people that we can, and part of my goal is like, how quickly can I get you to that moment? You know, you gotta like take a couple of leaps of faith to be like, okay, I'm gonna message this AI on WhatsApp and I'm gonna jump on a call and like, have a 5, like, I'm gonna talk to this AI as though I'm talking to a person. And like, so you have to sort of suspend disbelief a little bit, but then the payoff is so interesting. You're like, holy shit. Like somebody rearranged their schedule. Like, you know, both me and this other person really value our time, but we thought it was worth it. And it all happened because, yeah, we, you know, we like spoke, we like produced sounds and spoke to this AI and it went off and did some stuff.

Yeah.

It's kind of cool.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Definitely cool. Touch glass and a car shows up.

Yeah, which is absurd to so many people. I think some people still don't understand that fully. Grandparents and stuff like, wait, what? You know, I'm kidding. That doesn't work that way, does it? One of the things I had to ask about, given that this company comes after Clearco, it's just like, how have you thought about this time around what to do differently or like unique things to do or how you want to approach this company? I know we talked a little bit about it, but now that you've gotten to this point, you know, you raised $8 million more recently. How have you thought about the differences? Like, this time around of starting a company with Bordy?

Yeah, I think we, you know, we scaled the team very, very quickly at Clearco. We grew internationally. The only way to scale, and again, we were on this treadmill, right? It was like, raise more capital. We had to raise debt capital. We had this facility. We had like very complex business and a lot of people involved. And so it became a really complex machine that was difficult to run, was particularly difficult to run remotely. You know, over Zoom. So I think with Bordia, I think the couple of things I realized is like, I want to keep the team super lean and have, you know, have a small team of people who are really committed to the mission and who are empowered to do a lot. And that allows us to all keep the context.

Mm-hmm.

You know, any person on the team knows exactly, because we're moving so quickly, we're getting information so quickly, everyone knows exactly what's going on. And so I really want to keep the team as small as possible to deliver as much potential and as much impact as possible. I think, you know, there's ways of crafting product that, you know, you could build a lot of— like, I think historically you just have like a bunch of features, right? You're like, okay, there's a new set of features, a new set of capabilities. If we expand the features and capabilities, we can expand our target. you know, target market. With Bordi, it's much more, much, much deeper. So most of, most of the work, particularly the product and engineering work, you won't notice, right? It's not stuff that like, there's no app, there's no like, there's no dashboard, right?

Yeah.

So like, we could spend like a month working to make Bordi better. And on the surface, you have no idea, right? You can't, it's not like there's a good, like you can't have like a little new sticker. Of like, oh, here's like this new menu.

Yeah.

But it'll feel different, right? You're like, your interactions with Bordi will start to feel different because he can do, he understands you a little bit better. He's got a little bit more intelligence. He picks up a little bit more nuance. His ability to search his network, his network is bigger. It's like, you know, so there's all of that, like the craft of building the product. We can, we can invest in to make Bored Ape— pull Bored Ape out of the base model, you know, and make him feel more tangible. And then the biggest thing is just like network effects, right? Like we, we're now truly building a business that has network effects and some sort of sustainable moats, which I never had before.

Hmm.

And I think that's the other thing that like, I'm, I'm realizing, which is, it's very painful to start a network effect business. Like, it requires so much energy upfront. You have to be right, you have to be right and apply the right amount of force to get that flywheel started. And it's, you know, the payoff is low. Like, you read about Airbnb in the early days, and like the stuff that they would do, and how like slow it felt. Like they were like flying to people's homes and taking photos. And like, even before that, they were like, they were posting on Craigslist, like they were just doing stuff. And I'm sure like, it didn't feel like anything was really working. And then it did, right? Like the network gets big enough, and enough network density and enough liquidity happens. And then all of a sudden, it works. And so I've never built a network effect business before. And so this is new for me. But, but it does feel like some of those, you know, I've spent some time talking to people that have a lot of experience in it. And it does feel like we are On the brink of that, which is exciting.

What is it that has gotten this kind of wheel to spin a bit more with Bordi in terms of that growth, in terms of network effects? And I see you on like on X/Twitter, I have to call it Twitter still, like replying to things like Bordi, can you find whatever, like on LinkedIn, like Bordi, can you have like, what other things, especially early days and even now, has helped in terms of that, getting the word out?

I think encouraging people to share their stories. Right? Either publicly or privately. Like, that's, that's one of the most impactful. And like, it's good because like, it's, it's less of the like viral growth. Like there's a bunch of like viral tactics that we can do and we kind of know how to like, how to like build a bunch of awareness and attention. But I think, I think the viral tactics, they require a lot of effort and they, they generate a lot of like AI tourists. You know, people are like, oh, let me try this thing.

Yeah.

And so we can do that and we sprinkle in a couple of those here and there. But I wouldn't say that that's like the, that's the bread and butter. Like, I think the bread and butter is like, the product experience has to be so good that you can't help but tell people like, you got to try this, right? Or like, you sound smart when you post about your experience with boarding, right? Like online. And that, like, you know, we try and encourage people, we try and like, you know, we try and identify those stories. And when we hear them, we try and amplify them and repost them and stuff. But that's like, you know, that's, that's the growth loop that like, I'm particularly focused on, is just like, how do we get more people to share the stories? How do we get more, more success in that? And, and I think like, if we can nail that, then, then again, it just like, you know, you get, you build that word of mouth. But it starts with, can I, from, from somebody coming in very skeptical to having that magical experience of like, You know, you talk to this AI and something real in the world happens. How short can I get that? So that's, that's kind of my focus.

Yeah. And in my own, like, personal experience with it, like having this call with Bordy and then having a recurring calendar invite with Bordy, obviously move it around and all that. And then like, we'll say, okay, fine, you move to this time, whatever. Like, it's all good. Like, like, it's so interesting how that all the interaction has been. And like, I, yeah, you call it and then you have updates on your stuff. Like I'm looking for podcast guests or whatever it is. And like, You can't help but like, oh, it's just so helpful if you just make the time for it, a little bit of time. And it's like, that's it. That's all you gotta do. And to your point, there's no like interface. It's just like, it's just there.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We try to meet people where they are and where they're most comfortable. I think that's like, it's been one of the other challenges just across channels, across LinkedIn and X and email and phone and WhatsApp. Just like the, the channel-specific context, being able to sort of hold your universal context, but understand, understand like, what's the appropriate channel to message you on for XYZ, right? And sort of say, okay, well, I should message you on WhatsApp for these types of like back and forth. Maybe, maybe a phone call is appropriate. Okay, now I'm making an intro. Maybe I should make that intro over email. Like, you know, there's all these things that we sort of instinctively do. But the AI judgment isn't quite there yet. And so we have to sort of like, Tune that. But it's fun. You know, you're building a bit of a brain that is building its own judgment instead of like a rule engine.

Yeah, it's quite interesting. Everyone should go to boardy.ai to check it out. I selfishly have just a couple, like one more question left. I'm just curious about what other tools, AI tools, things you're interested in AI, like what are you seeing? Like anything you wanna talk about besides Boardy? Everyone should check out Boardy again, but I'm just curious for your being in creating things and anyone who's like in this space.

Yeah, I mean, I've been testing like AI-native browsers, AI-native email clients. Again, I haven't found one that I— either I haven't figured out how to use them. I'm testing Dia Browser now. I haven't figured out how to use them and get the most out of them. But I'm open. Like, if anybody has an awesome agentic browser, Or or an email client that really like is truly agenda and understands context. I mean, I think that's one of the hardest things with email is like understanding my context, understanding the context of like what's going on in my inbox, and and really making it sort of yeah, just sort of making sure that I don't miss anything. I think this is one of the hardest things is like I've even tried. I tried the the ChatGPT Gmail sort of connector, right? And Like, the reason people trust AI and want to use AI for whether it's like medical or financial or professional things is like, you feel like it's exhaustive, even shopping, right? So you think about like a use case of like using a shopping agent. I will trust it if I truly believe that it has been exhaustive, right? You've looked at every listing, you've looked at every single thing. You understand what I'm looking for and you've bubbled up to the top. As soon as I notice that you've missed something, like you've lost my trust, right? Mm-hmm. And so I tried, I tried a bunch of like AI health things. I put, I put a bunch of like blood test stuff into Gemini and I was like, hey, tell me what I should worry about. And it like produced a bunch of interesting charts and stuff like that. And then I was like, wait a minute, can you reference this? And like, oh no, sorry, I made it. I like, that was just a hypothetical. That wasn't your real, you know, your real like levels. And I was like, dude. And so then like you, you sort of, Very quickly lose, very quickly lose trust. So I think, I think with all of these sort of sensitive use cases, email, I think, is going to be the one that feels obvious people should be able to crack. But, but I don't think, I don't think we've— I haven't seen one that I trust yet.

It feels like, yeah, it almost has to do what Barty's doing. Like, it has to ask, has to talk to you and get really like, Granular ideas and like how you philosophically approach it and are looking for at that time, right? Because that might also change because like right now is a good example. So I started this thing called the LA Grind, local newsletter in Los Angeles for like founders and investors and stuff. And like right now I'm taking more meetings in person and in LA with a lot of different people than I ever have in the past. I'm more open to possibilities and opportunities for partners and sponsors and all this stuff. But if you would ask me like 3 months ago, I'm like, no, I'm heads down, I'm focused. I don't want any of that stuff. Like, say no to that. So it needs like a context switch, but like, there's a lot to it to do it well, at least.

Yeah, exactly. And being able to pick that up either explicitly or implicitly is a real challenge, right? I think that's like, you know, one of the, like, in general, the way that humans operate, we try and build like a model of the world, right? Like, what is reality? And we have these faculty, you know, we have these senses and we have our cognition. We have these facilities available to us to be able to build an accurate model of the world. But AI is trying to do— it has a different set of capabilities, different set of sensors to be able to build an accurate representation of the world. And I think if you can get the right context and you can actually represent, okay, well, what's— the truth is, what's important to Justin right now? And how do I, like, how do I infer that? How do I explicitly ask for that? You know, how do I ask for that in a way that isn't— doesn't put more cognitive load back on you? And if I can do that, then I can build a better model of the world, and then I can be more helpful. But I think the challenge is always like, you know, at what point do you get more explicit context versus make an assumption and do your best?

Yeah.

Uh, and I think that, that, that, you know, there's that, that jump that every sort of AI application founder has to decide is like, you know, could I just with one click give you something of value or do you need to spend an hour sort of downloading with me before you get the value back? And there's something in between that people need to nail.

Yeah, that part's super interesting because it's like, it's like in my example, could you have just seen what I've tweeted or posted on LinkedIn or like seen I'm taking meetings and like, Known that like, oh, he probably is taking more sponsor meetings. So like everything related to that, you should, I should just know to say yes to, or like try to facilitate towards that.

Like, like to your point, that's the context it could have.

Like it could just make those decisions or infer from that, which—

Have you, have you told Bordy that you're taking meetings in LA with like sponsors?

No, now I need, now I need to, now I need to do my next Bordy call.

Have you, have you talked to him on WhatsApp? Have you done a, have you tried the WhatsApp?

I think it's only been on phone call.

I don't think it's been WhatsApp yet.

Okay.

Just phone call. Try, try WhatsApp. I'll send you a WhatsApp link. Uh, there's, there's like, uh, you just shoot him out, shoot him. He'll remember all of your phone calls and stuff, but. There's a— yeah, you should be able to be like, hey, I'm looking for sponsors and stuff in LA, and he should be able to hook you up.

Hell yeah, I love that. Andrew, this was fun. I was very excited to talk because I knew all things Boredy and had seen it and like, okay, this is gonna be a fun conversation. But this has been great. Thank you so much for the time.

Oh man, appreciate it. Thanks for having me on.